On 14 May, Nobel Peace Laureate and pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was charged by Myanmar’s junta regime on the grounds of harboring an uninvited foreign visitor. Suu Kyi was removed from her home, where she had been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years, and taken to Insein Prison to await trial.

The charges claim that Suu Kyi breached the terms of her house arrest when an American man swam across a lake to visit her a week earlier.  Uninvited, Suu Kyi asked the man to leave, but permitted him to stay after he expressed being tired.  The man was arrested two days later.

Suu Kyi supporters have raised concerns that the recent arrest and upcoming trial are only a guise for the military junta to sustain its political power.  Suu Kyi poses the biggest political threat to the junta, and the junta has been known to unlawfully extend her detention in the past.

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Myanmar Opposition Leader to Go on Trial Again, The Associated Press, 14 May 2009.

Burmese Democracy Advocate Faces Military Trial, The New York Times, 14 May 2009.

Myanmar’s Suu Kyi Charged over US Intruder, AFP News, 14 May 2009.

Suu Kyi and US Citizen Charged, Democratic Voice of Burma, 14 May 2009.